


the horse and the rider

by salvation_dear



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 18:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5426567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvation_dear/pseuds/salvation_dear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>and every pond,<br/>no matter what its<br/>name is, is<br/>nameless now.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>From “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the horse and the rider

**Author's Note:**

> This veers from canon into an AU of its own from early seasons of the show.

It turns out Emma is the one who gets out of bed; Emma is the one who quietly thanks David for staying and ushers him out the door. He's concerned, she can see it in his face, but they are one day out from the funeral now, and the sun has risen in spite of everything, and the laundry is piling up, and what are Emma's options, really? Get up or stay down for good.

They single-file in the shower because Emma can't think of another way to get Regina moving, and she avoids the bathroom mirror and the reflection of her own eyes, optical-illusion dark in the valleys of her bone-sculpted face. She's been trying not to look at herself for weeks. She turns the water too hot and her skin immediately turns pink. Emma watches droplets rolling down the glass and the curve of Regina's hip, and reaches for the soap. Her hand ghosts against Regina's shoulder and she watches the other woman flinch, and bites back an apology so hard that blood leaks between her teeth.

* * *

She's reminded of jump-starting the Bug on cold mornings; of praying to a god she doesn't believe in for just enough juice to get her where she needs to go. Regina is still as death at the kitchen table, her eyes tracking toward the front of the house, and Emma suggests coffee in the hope that it will persuade her heart to turn over.

It's starting to frighten her just how quiet Regina is. Regina Mills – who in all the time Emma's known her has never been without a snappy comeback or a smart remark – is silent as the grave and just as still, as if she's afraid any movement will hurt. Emma remembers how still Henry tried to keep as the pain got worse, as Regina tried to cure him and tried to slow the cancer and tried to ease his pain, and finally, finally, stopped trying.

Emma offered her blood, her bone marrow, her heart, her soul. She'd been the one who insisted on going to other doctors, outside of Storybrooke; on a second opinion, on a third, on the possibility that there might be some kind of alternative therapy. And then when all the tests were over and Henry had been put through enough (“Hasn't he been through _enough_ , Emma?” Regina would throw back at her later in one of the truly vicious whisper-toned arguments that they become accustomed to; that they try to conceal from Henry) they drove back to Storybrooke, and Henry, always the bravest of the three of them, hummed along with the radio.

* * *

Emma tried to rid herself of the mental image of Henry's bones hollowing out as they waited. When they buried him, he would be as light as a bird.

* * *

Regina studied medical journals on the internet with the kind of preternatural calm that could only originate in an utter lack of hope. She held Henry's hand through the worst of it, took as much of his pain with magic as she could, cleaned vomit off his face and sheets, and read him The Hobbit and started on The Lord of the Rings, voice unwavering as she told him about magic rings and dragons.

Emma, for her part, could not let go of hope, and it hurt. It hurt like her heart was turning into something terrible and twisted and burned. It hurt like giving away a child.

* * *

Emma is starting to get sick of her own name.

_Emma, please call if you need anything._

_Emma, is there something we can do?_

_Emma, what did the doctors say?_

_Emma, we're so sorry._

No-one says Regina's name in the days that follow, except Emma herself. Even when Mary Margaret inquires after their well-being, she starts with “Emma - ” and later gets to: “Is she...?” and Emma just shrugs her shoulders and turns away before Mary Margaret can finish with “okay” or “holding up” or “ever going to be the same again”.

* * *

Regina goes back to work the day after, at Emma's suggestion. Emma wanders the mansion alone, wondering why she'd pushed for it. She'd expected some push back, she thinks, and maybe on some level she'd hoped for a reaction, for some of Regina's trademark fire, but Regina just dressed and did her makeup and picked up her briefcase and walked out the door. 

She drinks more coffee at the kitchen counter and chews ibuprofen for the headache cleaving her brain and puts laundry on and counts under her breath to a thousand and goes into Henry's room. The curtains are half-drawn, _The Lord of the Rings_ gathering dust on his bedside table.

Emma lugs his aquarium downstairs, slopping water over her boots and Regina's hardwood floor. She pours out the water in the kitchen sink, watching the fish flipping around disconsolately on the brushed metal before poking them into the garbage disposal. When she drops the aquarium into the trash can, it splinters satisfyingly, an angry sound, and she lifts up her foot and stamps it down, breaking glass against her sole.

* * *

Henry slept best at night, although he dozed on and off throughout the day, and as time passed a kind of half-waking dream was the best he could manage. They tried their best not to disturb him, unable to let go of a vague belief that sleep was healing. Emma, in solidarity, slept badly; had hot, pulsating dreams narrated by Regina's voice while the dragon Smaug breathed fire and blistered the skin from Henry's bones. Regina woke her when the sounds she made got too loud, and one time, still sleep-addled, Emma asked her that if dragons were real (she'd seen living proof, after all), was Smaug real?

The darkness was thick around them – Regina liked blackout curtains and was fussy about electronic devices in the bedroom, so no neon-green-illuminated clock telling time—but Emma was familiar enough with her gestures to know Regina was wringing her hands, and she reached out, waving a hand through the dark until she felt the other woman's fingers and held on.

“Babe,” she said, on a breath, soft enough that Regina couldn't object, and she heard Regina sigh.

“Not everything's a story, Emma,” she answered eventually.

* * *

For the rest of the day, she boxes up his clothes and washes his sheets and starts to burn his books in the downstairs fireplace. She dusts off _The Lord of the Rings_ with her hand and leaves it on Regina's coffee table. At one point she goes outside and looks up for the smoke, but it's dissipating in the daylight, fragmenting into clouds.

She waits for the sound of Regina's car, for her key in the door, and for her footsteps on the stairs. All of it happens in succession, no pause, no confusion. Emma hears Henry's bedroom door open – a faint squeak from hinges she was supposed to oil – and waits. Silence is liquid on the floor, soaking downstairs; she waits.

After some time she gets tired of waiting – Emma has been tired for months and waiting for months – and walks to his doorway. Regina is sitting on the floor among the boxes, legs awkwardly folded beneath her, narrow skirt riding up her leg. Even here at the end of all things, Emma lets her gaze linger. When she finally looks up, Regina's eyes are dragon-hot and furious.

Emma steps inside the room. At least they won't have to whisper any more, she thinks, and immediately hates herself for it.

* * *

By the time Smaug was slain and Frodo had left the Shire, Emma's hope was a constant pain in her heart and Henry was like a stop-motion skeleton, movements erratic, his hands huge against emaciated wrists. Regina read evenly and cooked dinner and applied lipstick with a steady hand. Their low-voiced arguments got uglier; the sex less frequent and more intense, Regina's diamond-hard short fingernails raking lines on Emma's sides, the once-playful nips of her teeth both harder and more arousing. For her part, Emma drove her fingers into Regina like she was desperately covering a sin.

* * *

Her heart is bruised, in the shower again later, running the water until it goes cold. She slumps on the floor, too tired to get out and shivers wrack and wrack her body. She doesn't know where Regina is, doesn't care what she's doing, doesn't know, doesn't care, doesn't know, doesn't care.

(She hears Regina come back much later that night, and quickly gets into bed and pretends to be asleep. She waits for a long time, but Regina doesn't come upstairs again.)

* * *

“Will you read it to me?” Emma asks her. 

Regina shakes her head, her lipstick-red mouth twisted in grief. Regina used to talk to her, once. Emma is forgetting the sound of her voice.

“Please,” Emma says. “For me.”

Finally, Regina picks up the book and removes the folded piece of paper where she and Henry had marked their place. She traces the page with one finger; clears her throat, then clears it again.

“Where - ” she starts, and her voice is small and rough. “Where now the horse - ”

Emma is startled by the sound of the hardcover book closing with a bang; a part of her brain idles that it's the loudest noise that has been in this house for days. When Regina walks out of the room and slams the door behind her, though, that's louder.

* * *

There was another doctor, and another. Regina refused to accompany them to the fifth one and, tight-lipped, told Henry he doesn't have to go either. He just smiled (too big now, his teeth too large in his paper-skinned face) and said, it will be a fun road trip, won't it Emma?

“Yes,” said Emma, staring defiantly at Regina. “We'll have fun.”

On the drive, Emma had to pull over so Henry could puke (the pain is bleeding through the good days now, washing over him all the time; if Emma lets her mind settle on this fact she'll go mad) and, always enthusiastic, Henry suggested they walk through a nearby field. Emma looked dubiously at the slope of roadside she'd parked the car on, and decided you only live once.

Henry tired easily and she knew he wouldn't walk for long. Emma kept her steps short and stopped when he tried to run ahead, watching him against the green of the Maine countryside, the gray of the sky. Up ahead there was a barn with a huge stars and stripes painted on the side; horses in the field. Henry stopped too, within a few strides, and turned back to look at her. She tried to save the imprint of this moment in her mind.

The Bug was displeased about being left alone, and Emma had to push-start it with Henry in the driver's seat. She hoped for divine intervention and no cops, because explaining this one to Regina would be interesting. The car finally started and Emma jumped in, playfully pushing Henry into the passenger seat. He was laughing breathlessly as he sprawled into the seat, then in his struggle knocked his arm against the door and let out a shriek that turned Emma's blood cold. She almost stalled the car, almost drove off the road, and it was only muscle memory that kept her foot on the gas and her hands at ten and two.

She said his name with the kind of terror she'd heard Regina employ a few times, and he waved a hand at her – I'm _fine_ – but the whimper he couldn't contain in his next breath was even worse to Emma's ears.

He's a _child_ , she found herself shouting at the doctor later. He's just a child. They've already stuck Henry with needles and poked and irradiated him and done everything they could possibly do; he was waiting outside, scarecrow-thin and light enough to float right off the earth.

* * *

“Guess we won't be making _this_ roadtrip again, huh?” Henry's kidding her later, in a diner. A waitress in a blue-checked Dorothy Gale dress delivers milkshakes in thick-walled glasses, beaded with cold condensation.

Emma, still embarrassed about having being escorted out by hospital security, ducks her head and stirs her drink moodily with the straw. The table they're sitting at is scarred with old graffiti; she traces her finger across “RJ 4 EL” and “this town fucking sucks”, covering up the curse word with the palm of her hand in case Henry sees it. It's not like he's never heard cursing, but it's something Regina would want her to do.

Henry places a steadying hand on his glass and takes the tiniest sip of his own milkshake. She'd ordered his with extra ice cream: he's lost so much weight.

“We'll do other roadtrips,” she promises him.

There's a long pause. “Sure,” Henry says finally. “Lots of them.”

Emma can always tell when someone's lying.

* * *

She and Regina weren't ever really the kind of couple wont to sweet nothings. Emma called people by their names, and when Regina called someone “dear”, it was almost always sarcastic. “Babe” had come about by accident, when she and Regina had been falling into this thing they called a relationship, when one day it had been non-date dinners and polite inquiries about each others' days, and then it just slid into something else while neither of them was looking, into kisses and whispers in the dark in Regina's bed and Regina's mouth between her thighs like this had always been part of their story. Like this had been written in the stars. 

She heard Regina tell Henry she loved him a hundred times a week; Emma, herself, tried to say it as much as she could, and although the words felt too big in her mouth when she first knew the kid, over time they got smaller and smaller. Emma wanted him to know how much he was loved. She wanted him to be anchored to them, to the world, with the weight of the words.

She'd never said it to Regina, and Regina had never said it to her. They weren't really those kind of people, Emma reminded herself.

Henry was the endearment exception for both of them, of course – the kid was both of their exceptions for a lot of things. Trust. Love. Had she ever loved anything before Henry? Emma wondered. Had she loved anything since?

* * *

The first time Henry has a seizure, Emma honestly thinks that he's dying and that she will die of fear and grief and horror. His back curves off the bed; Emma hears screaming and it later registers that it's her own voice. She scoops him up and carries him herself; he has never been lighter, she thinks. She thinks: he was heavier when he was born.

Regina is at work and has to meet them at the hospital. Emma's nose is full of sharp, clinical scents in the waiting room; when Regina sweeps in she can smell sweet musk and it's the first time she's breathed in hours. This is Henry's First Seizure, Emma thinks wildly, as if it's like Henry's First Words or Henry's First Steps.

* * *

“What happens in the end?” She'd seen the movie, but stories sounded different in Regina's voice. And she wanted to hear Regina's voice.

Regina laughed bitterly. “They save the world, of course. Isn't that how stories are supposed to end? Everyone gets what they deserve, in the end.”

Emma was about to contradict her, because clearly people didn't get what they deserved, but instead she paused, then reached out in the dark, feeling around for Regina's hand. She misjudged how close she was, and hit the other woman's arm too hard, and heard Regina hiss through her teeth.

“Sorry,” Emma said, and angled her legs off the bed, feeling with her feet for the floor. “Can I?” She crossed to the curtains and pulled them partway open. “I can never see a fucking thing in here.”

The moon was full and so bright that for a moment Emma just blinked, and then her eyes adjusted. Outside, she could see Regina's garden bathed in eerie gray light, and the lights of the rest of Storybrooke over the trees.

Regina still hadn't replied, and Emma turned, still in the window, to see the other woman watching her. The bluish light of the moon lit her face in scoops and shadows; her hair pitch against the wall. 

“I can close it,” Emma said hesitantly.

“No, leave it open.” Regina's voice was thick; throaty. Emma crossed back to the bed and crawled in, watching Regina's face. They hadn't been looking each other in the eye lately, she realized. Regina had a decent poker face, but Emma could always see what she meant from her eyes.

This time, she moved her hand more carefully, and wrapped her fingers around Regina's arm. For a moment she thought about pulling the other woman toward her, but instead she just held on, and watched the cloud-shadows play across the sheets.

“What about the hobbits?” she asked, not wanting the story to end, to be done yet.

“Frodo loses - " Regina stopped; cleared her throat. “He loses everything. He is never the same again.”

* * *

The next day and the next day and the next day, Regina showers alone. Emma listens outside, not quite sure what she's expecting to hear, and slips downstairs when she hears the water turn off. Steam and the smell of Regina's shower gel ease under the door; sweet and musky and full of a thousand memories.

* * *

She'd left Henry in the diner alone that day while she went to the ladies' room, stared at herself in the fly-spotted mirror and tried to get hold of her heart. She deliberately left Henry alone, she thought later, knowing Regina would have rushed back and fussed over him. Emma prides herself on being the cool parent; on knowing when to step back.

“You worry too much, babe,” she'd said just before the first appointment, and watched Regina pointedly ignore the endearment and try to keep her hands still. Emma had put her coffee cup down and covered Regina's hands with her own. “It'll be okay,” she'd said. “You'll see.”

Her own eyes are dark in the mirror. Outside, she hears the waitress shriek for someone to call 911.

* * *


End file.
